Prime Minister Scott Morrison makes a historic visit to Fiji and Vanuatu this week amid concerns over Chinese influence in the region and a diplomatic hiccup around terrorist Neil Prakash. On Prakash, Shannon Molloy explains this case of the Aussie-born terrorist and his citizenship saga, which

Nice try, you might say. Huawei has proposed a purely Kiwi workforce to assuage New Zealand’s concerns about the Chinese company’s potential involvement in developing 5G infrastructure.
That might not be enough if Wellington shares the full extent of its Five Eyes partners’ concerns about

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison will visit Vanuatu and Fiji this week. He is the first Australian prime minister to visit Vanuatu since Bob Hawke in 1990 and the first to visit Fiji since John Howard in 2006 (both were for Pacific Islands Forum leaders meetings). Long overdue, the visits

With just under six months before Bougainvilleans go to the polls to decide if they want independence from Papua New Guinea, last month’s APEC leaders’ meeting in Port Moresby gave fresh impetus to assertions that Bougainville is yet another fly caught in the web of influence and counter-

Australia has decided it is going to do a lot more infrastructure financing in the Pacific.
This is a welcome development. The Pacific faces some of the most difficult development conditions in the world and has huge financing needs, especially due to the effects of climate change. It is also

The first in a series where Lowy Institute experts look back on what surprised them in 2018.
If you had told me this time last year that in 2018 I would be one of the most frequently quoted Lowy Institute staff members in the media, I would have laughed you out of the room. Conventional thinking

The United Nations is calling on France and the US to close military bases they operated in Pacific territories. France has military bases in New Caledonia and French Polynesia, while the US has three bases in Guam. Is this a response to Chinese investments in the Pacific? The US has joined the

Renewable energy is high on the development agenda for the Pacific. The Lowy Institute’s Pacific Aid Map showed that donors and Pacific Island Countries are making a concerted effort to implement ambitious renewable energy goals. For example, the Cook Islands, Niue, Samoa, Tonga, and Tuvalu aim to

An explanation of why the APEC Summit was like no other. A week later, after leaders failed to reach consensus on a joint declaration, PNG Prime Minister Peter O'Neill has released a final communique, titled the Era Kone statement. US Vice President Mike Pence confirmed that the US will join

It is undoubtedly in Australia’s geopolitical interests to invest in the development of our immediate region, but the question we should all be asking is: what is the most effective way to spend our taxpayer-funded aid budget in the Pacific, rather than simply, how can we compete with China?
The

It is both apt and overdue that veteran ABC correspondent Sean Dorney was last night awarded the Outstanding Contribution to Journalism at the 2018 Walkley ceremonies. Judged by the trustees of the Walkley Foundation, this award not only recognises Dorney’s extraordinary body of work built over

The statements about the importance of the Pacific to Australia by Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Foreign Minister Marise Payne, backed by the Foreign Policy White Paper last year, are most welcome. The further decisions announced at APEC last week did even better. The fact is, Australia has

When Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced the establishment of the multibillion-dollar infrastructure development bank for the Pacific, the overriding sentiment was that this pivot to the South Pacific was designed to curb the rising Chinese presence in the region.
But is this renewed

You get the sense that while Donald Trump didn’t make it to Papua New Guinea for the APEC Leaders Summit, his reality TV producers could have had a hand in how it played out.
APEC 2018 had it all: conflict, romance, an exotic setting, and a dramatic finale that will keep trade diplomats on

I arrived in Suva six days before the 2018 Fijian election, it was apparent that the country was bracing itself for a tight election contest.
In 2014, Frank Bainimarama’s party, Fiji First, won in an electoral landslide. Its main opponent then, the Social Democratic Liberal Party (SODELPA),

Port Moresby is hosting the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit this week, and there is plenty of early coverage. The New York Times offered a scene setter, while the ABC used numbers to describe the efforts made by Papua New Guinea to host the meeting. Stephen Howes, however, examines the lost

It is a busy month for the Pacific islands region. Ten days ago observers watched as an independence vote in New Caledonia came much closer than polling predicted. Prime Minister Scott Morrison delivered a surprise with one of the most significant Australian policy “step ups” in the Pacific in

Bougainville’s history of peacebuilding is typically depicted as a story of light international intervention. Both the Bougainville Peace Agreement signed in 2001, and the later 2004 constitution establishing Bougainville’s political autonomy from Papua New Guinea, recognised local systems of

Three weeks ago, the American Journal of Transportation reported that Air Bridge Cargo Airlines had delivered 40 Maserati sports cars to Port Moresby. One of the first social media outlets to report this news was in a Facebook post by Emmanuel Narakobi, runs the blog Masalai.
Narakobi was then

Against New Caledonia’s troubled history, Foreign Minister Marise Payne’s statement was highly appropriate, expressing Australia’s acknowledgement of the achievement by the French government and local parties in a momentous vote on 4 November. The vote is the first step of the final

I never set out to make a film. But, as many filmmakers seem to discover, the story found me.
I have always been interested in the power of sport, and in 2014 I moved to Papua New Guinea to work in media and communications for the NRL-run, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade-funded League

The victory is clear, but certainly not as wide as the loyalists had hoped for.
On Sunday, the people of New Caledonia voted for their territory to stay part of France. To the question: “Do you want New Caledonia to gain full sovereignty and become independent?”, 56.4% (78,361 votes) voted “

Speeches on foreign policy made by prospective Prime Ministers or prospective Foreign Ministers in Australia are a bit like bingo games for foreign policy analysts. We listen (or read the transcript) eagerly to determine how many of the various recommendations we have all been making to the

On Sunday, 4 November, 174,154 voters will vote on the future of New Caledonia, a territory only a couple of hours flight east of Australia. They will be called to the polls to say “yes” or “no” to independence. How and why has this moment arrived, who can vote, and what will happen

Over the past six years, we have witnessed the steady, if not accelerating, deterioration of the mental and physical health of refugee children on Nauru. Their suffering has been described by medical experts as worse than they have seen in war zones or refugee camps around the world.
It is

Over the past year, Pacific specialists have been caught between bemusement, frustration, and deepening concern as elements within the strategic community in Australia and the United States have sought to shape the regional security narrative to reflect their growing anxiety about Chinese influence

It’s been quite a week for Papua New Guinea’s national government and the evolving relationships it will have with the country’s provinces in the future.
Last Friday, PNG’s Prime Minister Peter O’Neill and Autonomous Region of Bougainville President John Momis finally agreed on the

In preparation for APEC, Papua New Guinea has imported 40 Maseratis and other luxury cars to transport foreign delegates during the forum. PNG government says cars will be on-sold to “private sector”, and not everyone is happy. To protest against corruption in PNG, opposition MPs Bryan

Fiji, the country with perhaps the worst human rights record in the Pacific, has just been elected to the United Nations Human Rights Council. The event unfortunately coincided with the death of 26-year-old Josua Lalauvaki, who had been allegedly beaten by police in Suva last month.
As is

Last month, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with Australia’s Foreign Minister Marise Payne on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Wang Yi struck a surprisingly conciliatory tone, expressing the wish to partner with Australia in the development of the Pacific

There is disquiet among many for how post-conflict Bougainville society will evolve over the next generation if impunity reigns for the wartime horrors.
Over the next few months, the spotlight in our immediate region will turn to Bougainville and its referendum on independence from Papua New

As an onlooker at the intensifying debate about security in the Pacific islands, I see the danger of a widening paradigm gap between how Australia’s strategic community perceives the region, and how security is conceived by islanders themselves, as well as scholars of the region.
Two distinct

Papua New Guineans tell each other with pride and excitement that the eyes of the world will be upon them 40 days from now, when they host the APEC Leaders Meeting in Port Moresby on 17-19 November. They are not fazed that Donald Trump won’t be there.
His representative, Mike Pence, is

One month out from New Caledonia’s 4 November independence referendum, the French State has announced a number of steps it has taken to ensure a credible and peaceful process. The campaign is generally proceeding smoothly, although tensions around a boycott call and an ongoing mining blockade&nbsp

Right when Australia finds itself with serious strategic interests in its neighbourhood, it has managed to turn its once influential international broadcasting voice into a whisper.
One that’s difficult to hear outside a handful of major cities across the region.

The competition of who gets to fund the Republic of Fiji Military Forces (RFMF) Black Rock Camp in Nadi came to close late in August, with Australia coming out on top over China. The RFMF’s chief of staff for co-ordination, Captain Eronia Duaibe, said that Australia’s bid was successful because

A jet from the Papua New Guinea national airline Air Niugini missed the runway in the Federated States of Micronesia and ended up in the ocean. One passenger died. After significant delay, Fiji has announced the date of its general election for 14 November. In preparation for polls,

Pacific Islanders are extremely resilient, withstanding arduous journeys across the ocean, some of the worst natural disasters on record, and the quickest societal change in human history. But there are concerns that the coming challenges are different.
Shifts in the international order,

In July, the Marshall Islands signed a visa-free entry agreement with Taiwan, a clear testament to the strong diplomatic ties that Taiwan has achieved with some Pacific states in recent years.
However, the competition for the Pacific Islands is far from settled. Four countries have

Whenever a Pacific island leader starts insisting that his or her country is a proudly independent, sovereign state, standing firmly on its own two feet and not needing any help or advice from anyone else, it usually means the opposite.
Baron Waqa of Nauru was using “independent” and “

When Pacific island leaders gathered in Nauru this month, they issued a security declaration affirming climate change as the “single greatest threat” to the region.
That climate change is a threat to Pacific islands is in some ways obvious; indeed the climate change wording in the “Boe

Unfortunately for Papua New Guinea, new cases of polio have been detected since July. Jamie Tahana traces the origins of the pandemic in PNG, and explains how the disease could have been avoided. In Australia, the National party has been pushing for a new agricultural visa,

It’s not all that often the National party – the junior member of the Coalition government – has an obvious influence over Australia’s relations with its neighbours. But a push for a new agricultural visa by the Nationals and supported by the lobby-group National Farmers Federation is

The biggest diplomatic row between Fiji and Vanuatu in modern times was not over climate change, good governance, or Chinese investment in the South Pacific, but biscuits.
Two MSG members are facing independence votes within the next year or so, from opposite sides of the ballot box.
Vanuatu

The condemnation of China last week by Nauru’s President Baron Waqa at the Pacific Island Forum leaders’ meeting may have been bolstered by Taiwan’s substantial investment in that tiny Pacific nation of 13,000 people. Nauru is one of six Pacific countries to have diplomatic relations with

The ABC’s Stephen Dziedzic analyses the current tensions of the region that might influence talks at the Pacific Island Forum underway on Nauru. Nauru’s government has limited the movement of journalists covering the summit and placed restrictions on who they can talk to. A

Over the last couple of years Taiwan has been steadily haemorrhaging diplomatic allies. Countries from Africa, Central America and the Caribbean have switched allegiance to Beijing, leaving just 17 countries maintaining formal relations with Taipei. The largest bloc of such countries is in the

After changes of leadership and of government in Canberra, those of us who work on Pacific island issues are usually inclined to be optimistic. We hope that the incoming Australian Prime Minister and Foreign Minister might care more about the Pacific, might be inclined to spend more time in the